IEDM 2016 Has “New Twists,” Supplier Exhibits for the First Time

A bit earlier than usual, the IEDM (International Electron Devices Meeting) press kit is available, and among the announcements are a couple of surprises.

The biggest practical change is the addition of an exhibit hall – up to now the conference has been almost religiously anti-commercial, to the extent that forums (fora?) sponsored by (e.g.) Applied Materials, ASM, and Synopsys have had to be held offsite in other hotels.

To quote Tibor Grasser, IEDM 2016 Exhibits Chair, “We have decided to have a supplier exhibition in conjunction with the technical program this year, as an added way to provide attendees with the knowledge and information they need to advance the state-of-the-art.”

There is an element of truth to that, since many of the papers are authored by the R&D groups from equipment companies, and having some systems on site may help cross-fertilise ideas and techniques. Of course, a contribution to conference funds in the form of space rental always helps, too.

Another change is that the submission deadline for papers has been delayed to August 10, though there’s a twist to that too – accepted papers will appear without any modification; so BEWARE, your typos and other errors will follow you into perpetuity. Still, the later date is a good thing, in previous years submissions had to be almost six months before the conference, so finalised work could be almost a year old before presentation. There is still an opportunity for late-news papers to be submitted by 12th September.

Other than those changes, the conference follows its usual timeline from December 3rd to December 7th – tutorials on the Saturday, short courses on Sunday, plenary talks Monday morning, then likely eight parallel sessions of papers, wrapping up on the Wednesday afternoon. Interspersed through this will be the Monday evening reception, Tuesday conference lunch and evening panels, and the Entrepreneurs lunch on Wednesday.

There may also be off-site gatherings or hospitality suites; Applied Materials, ASM, Synopsys, and Silvaco have sponsored them in the past.

I would go through the schedule in more detail, but handily the Solid State Technology editorial staff have done that already. Once the full program is published, I plan on drafting my usual pre-conference review sometime towards the end of November. The conference is now in its permanent location at the San Francisco Union Square Hilton, no more visits to Washington DC.